{"id":5855,"date":"2015-02-23T21:38:07","date_gmt":"2015-02-23T21:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/?p=5855"},"modified":"2021-01-13T10:41:45","modified_gmt":"2021-01-13T10:41:45","slug":"the-guardian-view-on-journalism-and-advertising-selling-the-news-short","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/2015\/02\/23\/the-guardian-view-on-journalism-and-advertising-selling-the-news-short\/","title":{"rendered":"The Guardian view on journalism and advertising: selling the news short"},"content":{"rendered":"

We are all brought and paid for to a degree, I suppose.\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

\"PoweredThis article titled “The Guardian view on journalism and advertising: selling the news short” was written by Editorial, for The Guardian on Friday 20th February 2015 18.57 UTC<\/a><\/p>\n

For 160 years the Daily Telegraph has been as integral a part of British life as the long shadows on cricket grounds, warm beer and cycling to evensong that John Major once invoked, while paraphrasing George Orwell. You may not have shared the paper\u2019s politics, but it was widely respected for straight, accurate news reporting of the sort that is essential to any healthy democracy.<\/p>\n

This week the paper\u2019s integrity suffered something of a body blow when its highly respected former chief political commentator, Peter Oborne, published a devastating attack<\/a> on the newspaper\u2019s ethical standards. Mr Oborne detailed a pattern of behaviour in which, he said, stories had been suppressed, removed, downplayed, boosted or discouraged in order not to offend \u2013 or, alternately to please \u2013 advertisers and\/or financial institutions. His decision to go public with his allegations was sparked by the minimal coverage devoted to last week\u2019s revelations \u2013 widely reported in the UK and round the world \u2013 about HSBC\u2019s part in creating and encouraging tax evasion mechanisms. Mr Oborne believes the story was downplayed because the company\u2019s chief executive, Murdoch MacLennan, was anxious not to lose advertising revenue from the bank. This is a serious accusation, since Mr MacLennan told the Leveson inquiry on oath that neither he nor the paper\u2019s owners played any part in editorial decisions.<\/p>\n

If Mr Oborne\u2019s claims are right, he is justified in saying that the HSBC coverage, or lack of it, amounts to a fraud on Telegraph readers. A number of senior executives and former editorial staff at the newspaper have, albeit anonymously, endorsed Mr Oborne\u2019s general critique. The paper, normally an advocate of transparency, has so far declined to answer any detailed questions about Mr Oborne\u2019s article. A long, dishonest and callow editorial<\/a> on Friday almost comically attempted to shift the blame onto the BBC and the Guardian. You would never guess that the criticism \u2013 unreported in the Telegraph \u2013 actually came from neither of these sources, but from their own much-celebrated former colleague, who until recently was writing editorials.<\/p>\n

Many news organisations, old and new, rely on advertising. Indeed, the noted historian of British newspapers, Francis Williams, described in his 1958 book, Dangerous Estate, how the daily press \u201cwould never have come into existence as a force in public and social life if it had not been for the need of men of commerce to advertise. Only through the growth of advertising did the press achieve independence\u201d. But the reverse can also be true \u2013 as evidenced by widespread and dismal practices in the Indian press in which editorial coverage is routinely bought, and newspapers invest in companies about which they write.<\/p>\n

The Telegraph, as a privately owned newspaper, is not obliged to respond to questions about its editorial standards. If it wants to put up shutters and throw mud at rivals, it\u2019s perfectly entitled to do so. But, the longer it remains silent, the more its readers may draw their own conclusions about the integrity of a great British institution.<\/p>\n

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010<\/p>\n

Published via the Guardian News Feed<\/a> plugin<\/a> for WordPress.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Telegraph faces searching questions about editorial independence from within its own ranks. The integrity of a British institution is on the line<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[136,59,48,128,137,129,138,135,51,133,131,132,130,281,134,53,46],"class_list":["post-5855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings","tag-advertising","tag-article","tag-comment","tag-daily-telegraph","tag-editorial","tag-editorials","tag-editorials-reply","tag-leveson-inquiry","tag-main-section","tag-media","tag-national-newspapers","tag-newspapers","tag-newspapers-magazines","tag-opinion","tag-telegraph-media-group","tag-the-guardian","tag-uk-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6NRDR-1wr","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5924,"url":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/2015\/02\/26\/the-guardian-view-on-zero-hours-the-number-that-keeps-getting-bigger\/","url_meta":{"origin":5855,"position":0},"title":"The Guardian view on zero-hours: the number that keeps getting bigger","author":"diana Stone","date":"February 26, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The quantity of jobs is a pleasant surprise in this recovery, but the quality is often a shock. 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